


Wish I Stayed

by crystalemi



Series: We Could Happen [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Beta Wanted, M/M, Not Beta Read, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Steve Needs a Hug, Survivor Guilt, Talk of Suicide, he gets one, nothing triggering imo, this is actually fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 11:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2580626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalemi/pseuds/crystalemi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I actively avoid going out. I wouldn’t call that <i>acclimatized</i>, Steve.”<br/>Steve and Bruce and the heart-to-heart neither expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wish I Stayed

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to Rescue Team, therefore you do not need to read that to understand this one, however I'd still be grateful if you did read that other story!  
> That suicide thing is ugly I know, but Steve's brand of survivor guilt is a horrible thing too. If you want to know more about that suicide thing before reading, go to the end of the thing, I wrote what it's about in detail so you don't get triggered (I hope)!

“How do you do it?”

Bruce stops mid- _thing_ – he’s doing something with some vials and they look very science-y and smart and quite dangerous – and locks himself in place. He must have forgot then. Something uncoils inside Steve because – good gracious!, Bruce finally doesn’t feel at threat when around him and that’s so heart-warming he could sigh in pleasure.

“Do what, Cap?” Bruce asks and goes back to his vials.

“Getting used to…” Steve stops, looks around and bites his lower lip. He doesn’t know how to define his predicament, he just gestures to their surrounding and mumbles a frustrated “This.”

Bruce, bless his soul, understands without even sparing him a glance. Steve is quite happy that he doesn’t put down the vials and just keeps working, as he doesn’t want Bruce to become one of his shrinks, he’s had one too many and they never helped anyway.

“Steve, I’m afraid I’m not the guy with the answer.” Bruce mumbles, tipping the bright purple content of one vial in a round glass container full of something that looks quite like water, but probably isn’t.

“You seem quite… acclimatized.” Steve hints, but in the end, he loses Bruce over mumbled half-spoken gibberish on his experiments. It’s endearing how Bruce still uses a notebook for his results, calculations and hypothesis. It also hurts, because he remembers Howard writing like a man on a deadline (he probably had one, he muses) in one of his small notebooks while muttering excitedly. It mostly hurts since Steve misses him every day a little more, now that he lives with Tony – and they have so many things in common that sometimes Steve has to bite his tongue before calling Tony “Howard”.

“Anyway, I’m not really.” Bruce says suddenly, closing the notebook. He starts putting things away with a sad half-smile that make Steve’s heart ache.

“I actively avoid going out. I wouldn’t call that _acclimatized_ , Steve.” Bruce tells him while storing all the experiment parts in the closest refrigerator.

“I guess then we could go out together.” Steve says, internally berating himself for blushing, as if it didn’t sound bad already, without his face making things more embarrassing. Therefore he lamely adds: “to… acclimatize?”

“Steve, I don’t think you get it at all.” Bruce answers, his hands removes his glasses and he pinches the bridge of his nose, after having rubbed his closed eyes with the same fingers. “When you go out you feel uncomfortable and out of place because you’re not aware of what changed.” He goes on, putting his glasses back on with a tired sigh. “When I go out, I’m… _uncomfortable_ , because everyone around me could be a walking dead.”

“Everyone is a walking dead, anyway.” Steve blurts out, berating himself the moment he realizes what went past his lips. His Captain America, he’s got a reputation to hold on to, he really can’t go and be all cynic with the most cynical man he ever met.

“Don’t give me that, Steve, we both know…” Bruce starts berating him, but then he _looks_ at him and Steve can pinpoint the exact moment his cold demeanour slides away and Bruce is not looking at Captain America anymore, but he’s staring lonely, angry Steve Rogers in the eye. “You don’t really think that.” He tries then, and Steve shrugs.

“People die, Bruce, we can fight to protect them all we want, but they still go.” He mutters and it’s his time to press his index finger and his thumb against his eyes, as he is strangely emotional all of a sudden. It could be that Peggy’s passed away the month before and he still has to tell a living soul that his best girl is gone. Or it could be that Bruce has admitted to wanting to take his life, so he must know that there are times you feel so tired, the only option that look half good is the one no one ever wished to contemplate.

“Steve, what you did, it was unprecedented.” Bruce starts, tenderness in his voice, as he sits down next to him and his hand trembles for a few seconds, hesitating in his lap and Steve doesn’t know if Bruce wants to take his hand or not, but he wishes he just did. “Everyone that met you taught their children about you, and that’s how Captain America still lives. That’s what made you a hero.”

Bruce is looking at him, he sees him for the man he is and Steve is grateful he’s talking about Captain America and not Steve Rogers, because it is amazing and inspirational that Captain America has lived on, has been made a symbol and still lead men of honour even after he passed away… But Steve Rogers is Captain America, while at the same time, he’s still the stubborn kid from Brooklyn from before Captain America was born.

“I should be dead, everyone else is.” He says, and they both know it’s the truth. He should be dead. The Commandos’ dead, Howard is dead, even Peggy is dead, he’s now utterly alone.

It’s a shock when Bruce yanks him in a hug, but he ends up hanging on to him like a lifeline and he has to consciously refrain from letting go and whimpering on his shoulder. He doesn’t remember when the last time anyone hugged him was, but he’s pretty sure the last one who did was Bucky.

It takes a few minutes for him to calm down and he’s grateful for how nicely Bruce treats him. He doesn’t look at him with pity and he doesn’t baby him, he simply hugs back with the same strenght and waits for Steve to get a grip on his unruly feelings. It doesn’t even feel awkward, until Steve leans back and reluctantly lets go of Bruce's disheveled shirt.

“I’m sorry, I got emotional on you.” He chuckles, ruffling his hair, hoping against hope his cheeks aren’t red. Bruce, however, simply smiles back.

“It’s okay, I can relate to survivor guilt, in a twisted way. All of us can.” He says and there’s a sad glint in his eyes that tells Steve he doesn’t really want to talk about it, so he keeps it on himself, and it feels quite egoistical, but he doesn’t think he’s ready to listen. He will, if Bruce is ready to talk, but he doesn’t believe Bruce feels like opening up at all.

So he says, with reluctance: “But I’m Captain America”.

“You’re Steve and the world might need Captain America, but _we_ , all of us, we need _Steve_.” Bruce answers, taking off his glasses to clean them with the sleeve of his shirt. He’s smiling and Steve wonders if someone’s said that same sentence to Bruce, as there’s something wishful about him.

“That’s what you tell yourself about the Hu—the Other Guy?” Steve can’t help but ask.

“No.” Bruce chuckles darkly and Steve compliments himself for falling knee deep in a bad place for Bruce. He wants to tell Bruce how much he’s glad that they’re part of the same team and he vaguely remember, like a distant dream, a time of his past life, before the war, when he and Bucky were in the orphanage and Steve was always picked last for any game. He imagines that's roughly what being cast aside feels like, as childish as it sounds.

“You should. I feel the same about you, but it’s not just need, I want you.” He blurts out and reddens right after, conscious that this time it _really_ sounds bad, so he rushes to add: “In a platonic way!”

Bruce looks shocked for a few seconds, then he sighs and tries to explain himself, but gets stuck looking for the right words.

“Yeah, well, it—“ he starts, but then he changes his mind and blurts out “I think we –“ and in the end he settles for “The world doesn’t need or want the Other Guy.”

Steve isn’t known as someone that can’t see the good in anyone. He looks at Bruce straight in the eye with that attitude that Bucky always joked was what made him Captain America.

“Yes, it does.” He says, and as Bruce mouth curls in a self-deprecating grimace, he takes his hand in his and goes on with his monologue: “It needs the Other Guy's never ending stamina and strength, and it also needs your brain. You kinda saved Fury with your one-beat-a-minute invention, you know?” He smiles, in what he hopes looks encouraging. Bruce, however, grimaces.

“I didn’t invent it, I stumbled on it” He corrects, as if it’s actually important. Then he realizes he’s side-tracking himself and huffs. “Steve, I’m moved by your stubbornness and all, but this is getting nowhere and I’m hungry.” He says with a hint of a smile, and he’s begging Steve to drop it.

Steve knows when a fight is lost, and when a guy needs to retreat to win the war.

“Okay, fine, Chinese for five on the way, JARVIS?” he asks the omnipresent AI, giving Bruce a smile. Bruce chuckles and asks back: “five?” Steve shrugs.

“Can’t a soldier be hungry?”

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Suicide thing** I promised at the beginning: basically, it is my head canon that Steve (as most of the avengers) has survivor guilt. Let's face it, he belongs in the 40s and both he and Bruce rationally know he shouldn't be alive - although they are both grateful he is, and Steve isn't SERIOUSLY thinking of taking his life, but he does think he's terrifyingly lonely and he doesn't belong. He's a fighter, but he's still only human, so my head canon says that at some (very low) point in his 21st century life, Steve wonders if he shouldn't be dead.
> 
> **General Notes** : I have written down all the dialogues for at least two sequels of this story, I only need to fill in with some context. For anyone having read "Rescue Team", yes, this is still Bruce/Steve/Tony, but Tony comes in way later because imo it's horrible that everyone writes Steve and Bruce bonding over Tony while it's easier for them to bond on their own life experiences. So take this 'verse and maybe leave kudos if you like it ♥


End file.
